


Averted

by Dardrea



Series: If Darkness Never Falls [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Rumbelle - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Ogre Wars, fairy tale land au, pre-Dark Curse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3750010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dardrea/pseuds/Dardrea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a Desperate Souls rewrite, where Belle is the heir to her father’s lands and title and their lands, which are adjacent the duke of frontlands’, are being menaced by ogres at the same time that the cowardly spinner, Rumpelstiltskin’s, son is being conscripted to fight. Or:</p><p>A poor spinner and his son dash through a dark forest, trying to escape the boy’s conscription into the army to fight impossible odds against a horde of ogres. But their desperate flight does not go unnoticed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flight

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know. This started out as my last [Sunday Hiatus Fluff](http://archiveofourown.org/series/198107) but got too long and dark and stuff, so I ended up writing about [laundry day gone awry](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3413732) instead. But now this is done. I posted it the other night on tumblr when I was done but I didn't get around to posting it here--until now.

The forest was surprisingly lively this night. There were soldiers out in unexpected numbers, combing the trees: big men on horseback with fancy armor and fancier weapons, too proud to be stealthy as they hunted, too foolish to actually consider where their prey might hide.

They were the Duke of the Frontland’s men; his trusted personal guard, well trained and armed, not the poor cannon fodder he tossed at the ogres at the front.

And they’d been passing her by  _all_   _night_ , their horses’ hooves trampling the undergrowth, their tack jingling, their voices raised in bored chitchat. It wouldn’t have bothered her so much if they weren’t so damned noisy they kept waking her up. Was it really too much to ask that if they were going to half-ass their jobs anyway they just give up on it entirely and go find a tavern-keeper to annoy? It’s not like their master would lower himself to riding around the forest at night to check up on them and she’d never have known it was she they were after if they’d been quieter and less whiny.

She heard voices— _again, for God’s sake!_ —and rolled over carefully in her leafy nest high in a tree. Gravity was more danger to her than the Duke’s men, and she almost didn’t bother to open her eyes to see who was passing this time, but one of the voices was unusually high, like a woman—the Duke didn’t trust women, not in his personal guard—or a child.

She almost fell out of the tree when she saw him.  _Him_ , the one…now if  _he_  was hunting her—

But he was talking humbly to two other figures, a peasant who leaned heavily on an old stick, and a boy. She winced. She wasn’t a particularly good judge of children but she would guess he was probably fourteen or so and she likely knew why he and his father were scampering through the dark forests in the coldest hours of the night. News had reached even her that the Duke had lowered the age of conscription again.

They’d picked an unfortunate night to make their escape though and she didn’t understand why  _he’d_  be talking to them at all.

Begging? For alms? He was playing at being a beggar? But why—

Her heart clenched when the other man nodded and dug at a pouch at his waist, pushing something into  _his_  hands. Poor fool had no idea who he was dealing with and it looked like he had little enough to spare for him and his boy.

But then those other sounds, those familiar sounds, horse hooves and creaking leather and jingling iron, polished to a sheen.

_He_  disappeared. The man and his boy walked on,  _limped_  on—oh God, how much more pathetic could this be?

It had to be a trap. Not by the Duke’s men, they weren’t that bright, but there had to be a reason that  _he_  was wandering around this forest at night. But then he was certainly clever enough not to be seen baiting his own snare if that’s what was going on, wasn’t he?

There was no more time to decide. The horsemen had to be close—the man and his boy were lucky they weren’t already in view.

“Hey, you there! There are soldiers coming—come up here, quickly or they’ll see you!”

She didn’t actually remember deciding to call down to them but that was definitely her voice.

The boy and the man moved together, clinging to each other, looking around in panic for the source of the disembodied whisper.

“Up here!” she said, urgently, and as loudly as she dared. “Soldiers! C’mon!”

She reached an arm down and gestured. Four big, brown eyes, stared up at her, liquid with fear and moonlight. She’d always been a sucker for brown eyes.

“Give me your hand!” she demanded. The boy shot his father a look but the man was wise enough to nod at him and then the boy was reaching up for her with one hand, his other scrabbling at the bark of the tree. Between her pulling, his climbing, and his father pushing him up from below she soon had him up with her in her hiding place.

Then it was too late. She heard the shouts of the soldiers as they spotted the man at the base of her tree.

He heard them too and took off at a painful hobble, only managing to limp away a few yards before he was surrounded by the mounted soldiers, looking even smaller in the center of their band. She wouldn’t have been able to see him among them at all if she didn’t literally have a bird’s eye view at the moment.

The boy started to yell out in fright for his father, but she quickly clamped her hand over his mouth, pressing him against her to try to still any movement, and fortunately the sound of the soldiers—finally not bored—covered the little sound he’d managed.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here, huh men? A thief, trying to sneak away in the night? A poacher, stealing from our lord Duke?”

“No! No, sirs, just a spinner! Just a spinner, sir, going to the next town over to sell my threads.” He had a nice voice, she noticed, even raised in trembling terror.

The soldiers all laughed nastily and their horses shifted around him. She held her breath, fearing he’d shortly find himself trampled.

The largest of the men, the leader by his armor, dismounted and the rest of them backed up slightly, giving him space.

“You may be a spinner—” the soldier said, his voice dripping cruel amusement. “But you’re not traveling to sell your wares. I know you. Spindleshanks, isn’t it?”

His men laughed as though he were terribly clever.

Her face burned and her hands twitched with the desire to unsheathe her sword and teach them that not everyone who was smaller was an easy mark. But she held the spinner’s son in her arms, keeping him still and quiet while his panicked breathing and pounding heart spoke more eloquently than words how it tortured him to see his father down there, facing those men alone. She suspected the spinner would thank her more for keeping his son away from the soldiers than for any pointless attempt to wade into their midst to save him.

The lead soldier spun around, waving his hands and hamming it up for his men. “Or was it Threadwhistle?” he asked. He turned back to the cowering spinner. “No. No…I know! It’s Hobblefoot!”

They all laughed again and she couldn’t keep her hand from going to the hilt of her sword, though she knew she didn’t dare make a move.

One of the mounted soldiers called out mockingly.

“No, it’s worse—that’s Rumpelstiltskin, there.”

Their leader stepped up to the spinner menacingly, towering over him.

“Is that right…‘spinner?’ Rumpelstiltskin the Coward? The one who ran and left his allies to die in his place at the front? The man who’s own wife couldn’t bear his touch—and left to be a scurvy pirate’s whore rather than carry the shame of being the town coward’s wife?”

He flinched under the weight of the words. She abandoned her sword to grip the boy more tightly, not to keep him from calling out anymore but to offer comfort. Whether the taunts were true or not, no one should have to watch their father be bullied so. He shook in her arms but she couldn’t tell if it was with fear or fury.

The soldier shoved the spinner and he reeled back, stumbling, almost tripping.

“Well? Answer your betters when they speak to you or I’ll have you flogged!”

“Yes…yessir. I’m Rumpelstiltskin.”

Suddenly the soldier’s air of mocking joviality fell away. He swiped at him, sneering as the smaller man staggered back another step with a frightened cry. “And where’s your son, coward? I remember seeing him in the village—a fine, strong boy, looked to be about fourteen. Did you raise him to be as pathetic and cowardly as you? Running away in the night rather than defending his people, side-by-side with his countrymen?”

Fury. It was definitely fury that made the boy’s breath come hard and his body tense.

He was no coward. She’d bet that if she wasn’t holding him back he’d be down there taking on the whole lot of soldiers with his bare hands. He’d be cut down like a summer reed but he’d have gone after them if he could. She respected the desire even if it was folly.

She tensed herself when the soldier kicked at the spinner, hooking his ankle and bringing the slight man to his hands and knees. Laughter erupted again. She didn’t dare intervene but it would be awful to have to watch them rough him up—or worse. The soldier kicked at him again and the spinner cried out, ending up on his back, hands held up as though for mercy or poor protection, his face twisted by fear and shame and he tried to scoot away from his tormentor. On his back as he was she could see his face now, but he didn’t so much as glance in her direction.

One of the mounted soldiers spoke up, snickering at him. “Look at him. He’s so pathetic even his coward son wouldn’t stay with him. Left him behind so he wouldn’t slow him down while he ran. Like father like son.”

He cringed and his mouth trembled. She couldn’t make herself watch anymore. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead to the back of the boy’s head, sighing soundlessly into his soft curls.

“We’ll find your son,  _Rumpelstiltskin_. And we’ll deliver him to the traitor’s death he deserves for running from his duty. Perhaps we’ll take you in now and you two can face the gibbet together. God knows you’re long overdue that justice yourself.”

“Please. Please, no,” he begged and there was a deep, meaty thud and a low groan that made her flinch. A kick? She couldn’t imagine the soldier lowering himself enough for a proper blow.

“Why shouldn’t we? What mercy have you and your spawn earned, coward?”

The spinner sobbed and only muttered a few more sad pleas.

“No—I have an idea! You don’t want to be strung up like a dog? Want to live to run another night? I might be convinced to you let you live, coward—if you kiss my boot,” the soldier sneered, to a raucous chorus of laughter from the other men around him.

Her eyes shot open and for one second she saw the spinner’s eyes flick towards her tree though she doubted he could make anything out from where he was.

“Wha—what?”

The soldier nudged the side of the fallen man’s head with a booted foot; the spinner’s arms were already wrapped protectively around his own middle.

“Your fealty is the only thing in the world you have to offer, coward. Kiss it—” He nudged the spinner’s temple with his boot again. “—and I’ll spare you. We’ll still find your boy and take him back to face justice for trying to run, but at least  _you’ll_  live. And that’s all that matters to a coward, isn’t it? Kiss my boot or I’ll gut you and leave you alive for the bears and the wolves—or whatever vermin think your scrawny bones are worth picking clean.”

The spinner rolled unsteadily towards the soldier’s foot, back up on his hands and knees. Visibly shaking with shame. He bent, the picture of cowering subservience, but from her angle above and behind them she could only assume he’d done as he’d been ordered: the soldiers broke out in laughter again and their leader gave the fallen man one more kick to the shoulder, upending his victim one last time before going back to his horse and remounting.

“You’ve been unexpectedly entertaining. Have no doubt, we’ll find and execute your son. But I suppose we’ll let  _you_  live for now. Farewell coward. At least now you know your worthless line will die with you.”

They turned and rode off, leaving the spinner gasping and groaning and teary-eyed beneath the trees while she and his son waited in breathless silence for some sign of the soldiers’ return.

 

* * *

 

There was no way the lame spinner would be able to climb the tree and find the safety that had guarded her through the long night so she and the boy climbed down instead.

“I’m Belle,” she whispered as she dropped the last bit to stand with them at the base of the tree, trying to pretend that she and the boy hadn’t seen what the soldiers had put him through. As soon as he was down the boy had flown at his father, holding him so tightly the slim man seemed to find it hard to breathe but he held on as well and didn’t let go. His eyes flicked to hers when she stood with them though, seeming surprised that she was still speaking to him at all.

He licked his lips. “I’m Rumpelstiltskin,” he whispered as though there was some chance she hadn’t heard the soldiers mocking him. He patted weakly at his boy’s back. “And this is Baelfire, my son.”

She nodded. “Rumpelstiltskin. Baelfire. I’m afraid we need to keep moving if we don’t want to be caught. They’ve been searching the forest all night. Not well, but they will be back.”

He glanced up at the tree and back at his son.

She shook her head. “If you trust me, stay down when I say, run when I say, I know a place not far from here where we should all be safe enough.”

He hesitated—but not long. The matched sets of dark eyes watched her again. Slowly he nodded.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t easy keeping to the spinner’s pace. He could move faster than she would have thought but it wasn’t fast enough to ease her concern at being found by the Duke’s men. He also wasn’t quiet by any means and his boy wasn’t much better.

Still, it didn’t take her too long to get them to one of her previous hidey-holes, a deep crevasse behind a sluggish waterfall. A trick of the light and water made it seem that there was nothing there but solid stone, it had been pure luck that she’d found it herself. Luck and a little gray-green lizard she’d seen dashing past the water just as she’d found herself almost caught in the open, drinking from the sluggish stream as mounted riders had been coming noisily upon her.

She settled the three of them into the small space, though the spinner had to leave his staff outside, hidden in the underbrush. There was no room for a fire and it was a damp hidey-hole that she’d been happy to abandon earlier, but there wasn’t room for them to _not_  be huddled together either, so body heat would be enough to keep them from getting too cold for all of that. She let the boy go in first and the spinner after him, taking the outermost position for herself.

There was space for all three of them to stand but not for them each to stretch out, sitting cross-legged and pressed to the walls and each other, there was just enough room for them to all be safe from the worst of the water spray and she knew the sound of the water would cover their voices so at least they could talk.

“You keep dangerous company,” she told them as they settled in together.

The boy snorted. “We’d rather not keep company with any of the Duke’s men,” he said, anger and fear making his young voice thready.

She hadn’t meant the soldiers but she decided not to correct him.

“Who’re you?” the spinner asked, one arm around his boy, suspicious now that they were alone.

“A refugee,” she said.

“From the front?” the boy asked with something bordering on eagerness.

She shook her head. “From Avonlea,” she answered quietly and silence fell between them for a moment.

Fair Avonlea, the seat of the dukedom of Maurice L’Inventeur, had fought a hard battle against the ogres that threatened their kingdom—and lost. The city had been ruined, the people slaughtered or scattered and no one knew for sure what had become of the Duke and his family, though rumor said they’d stayed until the last, rallying the soldiers that had held off the ogres as long as could be done, so as many of their people could escape as possible.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” the Spinner said softly, his head lowered and turned a bit towards his son, so his hair shielded his face.

Some griefs were too deep to speak of, so she did not.

“And you two? You’re trying to escape the conscription?”

The boy shot his father a look of chiding. “Yes, but we shouldn’t. I’m not afraid to fight—”

“Don’t be a fool,” she said more harshly than she’d meant to, but the boy looked at her in shock and more than a little hurt—God, he was so young—and his father looked at her with narrow-eyed anger. “It’s a pointless battle,” she explained, trying to keep her tone level. “A power play by the Duke of the Frontlands to keep his people in line and impress the king.”

“If it was no more than a pointless power play, then how did Avonlea fall?” the boy asked with tactless wisdom.

She felt her own temper rise, though not at him. “Because it amused to the Duke to see it fall, to hold his stance against the ogres while Avonlea fell and show the king how much better his own efforts are, to do away with a rival and likely one day claim his lands and holdings—the Duke is a cruel and calculating man, even if he’s a short-sighted one. In your village, you’ve heard of the Dark One?”

The other two shuddered and both looked away, as though afraid mentioning him even by so broad a name could summon him to them. It was almost amusing, considering her first sighting of them.

But she knew better than to fear his title. Even calling on his true name wouldn’t summon him while he was already in thrall to the dagger’s possessor, though she’d done her research and knew his true name as well. She nodded once, though neither looked back at her yet so it was wasted.

“The Duke commands the Dark One, and the Dark One could do away with all of the ogres easily if his master would just command it. The Duke could have saved Avonlea if he’d cared to do it; he could save all his people any time the mood struck him.”

“Then why wouldn’t he?” the boy asked, confused.

“Because this way he has a method to distract his unruly peasants and vassals while he steals their freedoms, while he closes schools and raises taxes and drives his people back into want and misery so he can throw balls and live fat off their work and do his best to impress the king.”

“If the Dark One is so powerful why does the Duke try to  _impress_  the king? Why doesn’t he just command the Dark One to  _make_   _him_  king?” the spinner asked.

She sighed and rested her head back against the rough stone wall of the crevasse. “Because unlike the poor people of Avonlea and the Frontlands, the king is protected by fairy magic, and the fairies are the only thing that the Dark One doesn’t seem to be able to easily overcome. But fairy magic isn’t easy to come by.”

The boy perked up in excitement. “Reul Ghorm—”

She snorted. “Only takes interest in those of royal blood and even then, only for her own ends. Don’t mistake me, the fairies are no better than the Dark One as far as their concern for common people goes.”

She’d tried. Oh yes, she tried: wishes on stars and wells and whispered incantations. They’d come—and if she’d been looking to run away and marry a foreign prince she’d have found the help she needed—but not in time to return with an army even if her new husband were truly infatuated enough to care—and there’d been no interest in combating the ogres or saving common soldiers and farmers. It was too late, they told her. It was all part of someone else’s story—as though she should accept that the blood of her people was being spilled because they were just fodder in “someone else’s story.”

She turned her head to look at the boy’s face, peeking over the spinner’s shoulder, his wide eyes seeming to consider all she’d said. “Baelfire,” she said gently. “Don’t be angry at your father for trying to save you from a pointless death. It’s a slaughter, not a war, and it will go on exactly as long as it pleases the Duke to allow it to, with no difference at all whether another hundred child soldiers die or another hundred thousand do.”

She sat up, suddenly scrambling at her belt, remembering her bemusement at watching an obviously destitute man offer alms to a beggar-who-wasn’t. She pulled six coins from a hidden pouch along the inside seam of her sword belt and held them out to the spinner. “In fact, here. Take these and use them to purchase passage on a ship out of Grevenport. There should be enough to get the two of you wherever you’ve a mind to sail, to get a captain to overlook your lack of traveling papers from the Duke, and if you’re canny, even a little left over to tide you over for a bit wherever you decide to settle.”

The spinner held one weathered hand out for the coins she offered him and then closed his fist around the shiny, weighty gold, staring at her in stunned silence. He looked as though he wanted to refuse—but couldn’t make himself be so foolish. He also looked as though he might be beginning to reconsider the idea that she was a simple merchant’s daughter fleeing from the destruction of Avonlea. There was no help for that. She’d done her best but there were so many lives she hadn’t been able to save, she couldn’t keep herself from trying again.

She closed her hands gently over his fist. “Please. Do it. By sunrise the Duke’s men will have to withdraw—they’ve been combing the forest all night. We can make a run for it then. Leave these lands and be safe. Life good lives to honor the ones whose lives were spent in vain.”

He couldn’t look at her but he pulled his hand away and the coins disappeared into the purse that she’d seen him take a coin from for the ‘beggar.’

“Will you come with us?” the boy asked.

“Bae!”

She smiled. “No, young sir, I’m afraid I have business here yet.”

“What business is that?” he asked, full of curiosity and too young to think better of asking his questions. She’d seen the frontlines of the ogres war; she couldn’t imagine this… _child_ being asked to throw his life against the raging of their impossible enemy. And yet the Duke would throw him and all others like him into the fray for his own dismal ends.

She lowered her head, feigning shyness. “I don’t know that I dare say…can I trust you?”

He leaned so far forward over his father’s crossed legs she wasn’t certain how he didn’t fall, his eyes opened wide as saucers. She leaned forward as well, leaving the poor spinner looking rather uncomfortable at the whispered tête-à-tête happening over his lap.

“I’m going to try to steal the Dark One away from the Duke’s power!”

The boy gasped in a satisfyingly impressed manner. “How?”

She leaned just a little closer, almost nose to nose with him. “I’ve been doing research: the Duke controls the Dark One because he possesses a magical…item…that compels the Dark One’s obedience. I’m going to sneak into the Duke’s castle and take it.”

She leaned back, nodding. “Then I’ll command the Dark One to banish the ogres from our kingdom—and bring back all the soldiers and children from the battlefront.”

“Can we help?”

“Bae! Stop it. An adventurer like…Belle here, doesn’t need help from the likes of a spinner and his son,” the man said nervously, though whether he was nervous at his boy’s bravado or nervous that she’d take offence to the two of them and demand her gold back she couldn’t guess.

She giggled and couldn’t help reaching out to tousle the child’s curls.

“Some things are better attempted alone,” she told him. “Sneaking and stealing are harder with more footsteps to muffle. And this way if I fail, at least I’ll know you two are far away and safe. If I can’t save everyone, at least I’ll know I saved you. That’s…important.”

The grief stole up on her and robbed her of her voice. Her father’s only child and heir, though it was beyond unusual, she’d been raised by her indulgent parents to believe that all that had been her father’s would be hers one day, including his responsibilities to their people. The last she’d seen of her parents they’d stood shoulder to shoulder with the remaining soldiers, ready to face the ogres as the inner walls were breached.

She’d wanted to stay with them but they’d convinced her to lead the refugees away instead. As a precocious child who’d grown up in the castle and its surroundings in safer days, no one had known the hidden ways of the castle and woods better than she did. She’d led the last refugees to safety. She’d seen them fed and given generously of the treasury to send them off to find a chance at life away from the horrors that had destroyed their home. Then she’d left to find the dagger of the Dark One and atone for the crime she’d committed against them all.

That would remain  _her_  secret, a burden she wouldn’t share with anyone: that when she’d learned of the Dark One and his power she’d sent letters to the Duke, naively begging him to help. When he’d refused she’d sent other letters, threatening to expose his indifference to his countrymen’s suffering and abuse of power, and finally, threatening even to spread the word far and wide of the dagger’s existence. Within a week the ogres had breached the outer walls of Avonlea. Three days later, they’d breached the inner walls and her parents and people had paid the heavy cost of her thoughtless arrogance.

She’d been running since the escape from the castle, and he’d been searching for her, not trusting that she’d died, or possibly informed that she hadn’t. She didn’t understand why the Dark One himself hadn’t rooted her out but she suspected that if the Duke hadn’t thought to demand it of him he wouldn’t have volunteered. She certainly wouldn’t have volunteered any help to so cruel a master. But in all likelihood, in spite of sending his soldiers on their half-hearted search for her, he simply wasn’t that worried about what one lone girl could actually do to threaten him.

For all that her parents had indulged her interests in weapons and strategy there had never been many opportunities in their kingdom for ‘mere’ women to be heroes—why should the Duke really fear her?

The spinner cleared his throat. “Uhm…here,” he said, holding a threadbare piece of pale linen out to her. She looked at him in confusion but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “For your—ah…” He gestured vaguely towards her face.

She touched her cheeks and found them wet with tears. Annoyed and embarrassed she took the cloth and wiped her face. With her books and her lessons she’d once thought herself terribly brave. When she’d been allowed to try herself in combat in a carefully chosen company of soldiers, first patrolling her peaceful lands and then against the ogres themselves, she’d thought her mettle was proven. Now that her bravery was tested as she stood alone in a way she’d never been before, it seemed it would fail her. She’d once thought that she only had to do the brave thing and bravery would surely follow. Now she wasn’t so sure: she wouldn’t stop pursuing her plan but she felt more resigned to her fate than brave in the face of it.

She would probably be caught and killed.

But at least, if she would never know a life beyond running and hiding again, if she would never know her parents’ tender touches or the company of friends again, at least she would know this spinner and his son were better off for her having survived the attack of the ogres that destroyed Avonlea. At least they would live.

“Thank you,” she said softly.

 

* * *

 

A bit before dawn the spinner shared a hard crust of bread and a few scraps of dried mutton, generous again with what little he had. In other circumstance she would never have taken food from a man who had so little to spare but pride didn’t win over hunger, not anymore, when all she’d had to eat since she’d refused to take any rations from the refugees four days earlier had been some frogs she’d caught by the river. 

They parted with quiet well-wishes and the spinner and his son headed, limping carefully, towards the west while she went east, towards the Duke’s castle.

 


	2. Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gone, but not for long.

She was becoming reckless and she knew it. The soldiers were idiots, didn’t know who they were looking for, and clearly had little interest in actually finding her. She reached the squat, dirty village closest to the Duke’s castle by noon and headed for the tavern. Ostensibly, she was going to listen to local gossip and see if anyone happened to know anything about the Duke or where he might hide something precious to him, like the dagger that was the source of all his power.

It was the problem with her plan after all: she knew he had it, she presumed it was in his principle castle were he would always have it close to hand and know it was safe…but she had no idea where in the castle he might keep it. His soldiers didn’t know who they were looking for aside from badly done sketches, but the Duke had met her and would recognize her if she tried to sneak into his castle as a maid or some such ridiculous thing.

So in the meantime she would nurse an ale or two and listen and ponder her options.

As the day went on she nursed a dozen ales though the last were less ‘nursed’ and more ‘knocked back like a sailor on a bender’ in a way that would have earned her a very stern look from her mother.

Of course, if her mother were alive to chide her she wouldn’t be drinking sour ale from a dirty cup in a dingy little tavern halfway between a war zone and a palace.

Her head drooped, weighted by dark emotions and ale. She told herself sternly that she could have this one night for grieving and self-pity but in the morning she would have to figure something out. Her town had fallen and her parents had died for nothing otherwise, just casualties of their daughter’s arrogance and impulsive, unsubtle jabs at a powerful foe. Some duchess she would have been. She sniffled and wiped at her nose with her sleeve.

There was a sound…tapping, scratching. She turned towards the window she’d sat herself beside hours ago. Then, it had looked out on muddy streets and an untidy back alley, now it was darkness—and a pale, floating face, ghostly, gaunt, and large-eyed. Angry.

She shrieked and stumbled backward from her seat, tripping over her own feet and ending up on her back in filth she was best off not thinking about, staring up at the dusty beams of the ceiling.

“Think you’ve had a bit too much, pet,” someone said, and laughed.

Several others laughed as well but these were not happy times and the laughter didn’t last.

The ungainly landing had sobered her a little. Enough to make sense of the face she’d seen through the window anyway. She got back to her feet and settled her account with the tavern keeper before heading out into the night to face her ghosts.

The spinner grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into the alley as soon as she was close enough for him to reach.

“Some hero you are!” he said, his tone every bit as angry as his face had been in the window, watching her down her twelfth ale of the night. “Good thing Bae can’t see you now—he bought your crazy story about trying to save the children from the front.”

She was angry enough to discount the insult that otherwise might have leveled her again, echoing her own self-assessment as it did. “What are you doing here? You were supposed to run! You were supposed to be  _safe_. I was supposed to have saved you!”

“Shhhh. Be quiet, you fool. Are you trying to get caught?” he whispered back, dragging her further into the alley.

“I  _am_  being quiet!” she said even as she realized she was, in fact, not. What gave him the right to be so angry, anyway? She was the one who’d been betrayed. He and his son were supposed to be safe. “Where’s Baelfire?” she demanded, managing to keep her voice down to a drunken whisper.

The spinner sighed at her in obvious annoyance. “C’mon. I’ll explain back at my place,” he said, still holding her by the elbow and pulling her back out of the alley, surprisingly strong, even limping and with one hand glued to his cane for support.

They were just at the corner of the alley when he was gone, and she blinked down in confusion, not understanding why he was suddenly lying face-down in the dust.

She started to ask when another voice cut out of the darkness.

“Found yourself a bit of company, coward?” the voice said nastily. “Does she know what sort of ‘man’ she’s with? Can’t imagine you have enough coin for even the most pox-ridden lady of the evening if she did know. How about I tell her?”

 He—he was calling her a prostitute! That struck her first. It took her a second longer to understand that her spinner was slowly trying to crawl back to his feet because the other man had deliberately tripped him.

She acted on instinct, and surprise was her ally in grabbing the man by the wrist and pinning him to the wall of the alley with her dagger pressed dangerously to his throat.

“I should warn you,” she said slowly and deliberately. “That I am quite drunk. I am also very very good with a blade as you will note by the fact that I haven’t accidently cut your throat yet. However, since I am quite drunk and no longer capable of seeing straight, I cannot guarantee I will be able to  _continue_  not cutting your throat…by accident, you understand, because I am not an animal who normally goes around cutting people’s throats no matter how unpleasant they are—and did you really just call me a whore? That simply wasn’t nice  _at all_. Therefore, it would clearly be in your best interest to apologize to my friend and myself before my hand shakes and you end up bleeding out in the dirt beside this charming little tavern.” 

He was shaking. Or possibly her hand was. In either case it was probably dangerous.

“Stop! What’re you doing? Let go of him!” her spinner demanded, finally regaining his feet behind her.

“Not until he apologizes,” she said stubbornly.

“If he tries to say a word your blade  _will_  slit his throat. He can’t apologize.”

She blinked up blearily into the tall man’s terrified eyes. “Hmm, you may be right,” she said. He didn’t look like he was even breathing and she had been rather surprised he hadn’t interrupted her.

“Would you please put that away?” the spinner begged.

She didn’t like hearing him beg. He was a generous man and good father. He didn’t deserve to have to beg, soldiers or bullies or even her. She pulled her dagger just a little away from the other man’s throat. He instantly took a deep, shuddering breath. “Now—say you’re sorry.”

“Oh for god’s sake—”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the man said shrilly before she was tempted to replace her dagger.

“Good man,” she said. “And don’t get any ideas about coming at us from behind when I put my dagger away. Even drunk, I promise I can take you. I’ve been training my whole life. Have you heard of muscle memory?” She shook her head. “Of course you haven’t. Fascinating topic, I’ll have you know. And I’m even better with my sword than my dagger. It’s a slightly different discipline of course, the long blade rather than a short one for close quarters—”

“Will you please stop talking and  _leave him be!_ ”

She frowned but carefully wiped her blade on the other man’s tunic before resheathing it and turning back to her spinner.

“You’re bossy for a spinner,” she told him, as though she knew any others. He grunted and grabbed her elbow again, pulling her away.

“Sorry Claude,” he muttered. “M’cousin come from Avonlea. Doesn’t take to being called a whore for some reason and isn’t much good at holding her liquor.”

She let him drag them away, not wanting to waste any more time on that other fellow, though once she was comfortable that they were enough of a distance away and that he wasn’t following in the shadows, looking for revenge, she tried to turn on her spinner. “I’m very good at holding my liquor, thank you!”

“As good as you are with a blade? You may not have slit his throat through, but he’ll have a scar that’s worse than from shaving.” He hobbled with surprising speed through what were apparently familiar streets.

“I’ll have you know—”

“I’d rather not know anything else about you—duchess,” he said, opening a door in possibly the most ramshackle little hut she’d ever seen and pulling her in behind him.

“Oh, so you figured that out?” she said, slightly subdued, as they were shut into the dark and dingy space that was home to this man that apparently everyone called a coward.

“It wasn’t exactly hard. Everyone’s abuzz that the Duke has his soldiers out searching for Her Grace, Lady Belle of Avonlea. Some business about her trafficking in dark magic and summoning the ogres into her own castle as part of a spell gone wrong.”

“What?” she squawked.

“Hush!” he ordered, dimming an oil lamp by the door and tossing two small logs onto the hearth. He grabbed her again and led her to the single chair by the fire, setting her firmly down into it. More carefully he lowered himself to sit cross-legged in the dirt across from her.

She instantly felt guilty. She shouldn’t have the one chair as though she were special because of her birth. She opened her mouth to apologize but he cut her off.

“This is all your fault,” he said, not looking at her. His hair was lovely, falling forward to hide his face from her. Her fingers itched to brush it back.

“I know,” she said mournfully, wondering how he knew.

He shot her a look. “Don’t you even want to know  _what_?”

She blinked. The fall of her city and death of so many of her people—including her parents. Or what was  _he_  talking about?

“Baelfire!” he said. “My son? Who believed your big talk?”

“What happened to him? Is he okay?” she asked in a sudden panic. He was supposed to be safe.  _They_  were supposed to be safe and on their way to a distant land where ogres were just painted monsters in children’s stories, not a threat camped out on your doorstep waiting to eat your family. What was the spinner doing alone with her in this falling down hovel in a dying town by the Duke’s castle?

He growled. “We met someone after we left you this morning and he told us an interesting story. Bae wouldn’t leave with me unless I tried to find you and tell you about it. He insisted that if you were planning on robbing the Duke’s castle you’d find your way here, and look, my clever, trusting boy was right.”

“But where is he?”

“I left him hiding in the woods. Hiding in a nest up in a tree like you were; he was so excited to get to try it.”

She snorted, dazed. “I guarantee the excitement won’t last long. It’s boring as hell hiding in a tree for hours, let alone all night. How could you let him do that?”

For a moment he sputtered. She had to admit she preferred the seething, stuttering anger to the broken begging. “I couldn’t stop him! He said if I didn’t try to track you down he’d turn himself in to the Duke’s men and try to make your insane plan happen himself.”

“What?”

He leaned forward, his shoulders losing their sad curve in his ferocity. “When we left you we were going west, towards Grevenport and our escape but we were waylaid by a beggar we’d met earlier—”

“The beggar?” she asked faintly, terror cutting through her drunken haze and sobering her as nothing else could have.

He nodded shortly. “He said he wanted to help us. He knew Bae was being hunted by the Duke’s men for avoiding his conscription and he told us a fabulous tale—almost as fabulous as yours.”

It was no accident if the Dark One had sought them out again. What did this mean? Was it all a trap? Was the Duke more canny than she’d given him credit for? But no, if he’d wanted her enough to get his pet involved he didn’t need bother with traps; he certainly could have just had the Dark One make her appear before them,  _she_  wasn’t protected by fairy magic. If it wasn’t about her—what on earth could the Dark One want with this poor spinner and his son?

“It was a familiar tale by the time he told it to us, but he added certain details: the fact that it was a dagger for one—and that it’s hidden behind a tapestry in the Duke’s study.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“What?”

“The beggar?” She was on her knees before she knew it, grabbing the spinner by his bony shoulders. “Did you tell him about me? Did he ask? Did you say you already knew about the dagger?”

“I didn’t know about the dagger, you didn’t see fit to share that—”

“Did you tell him about me?” she demanded again, shaking him, though for all his gaunt and frail appearance he was too sturdy to be moved much by her meager strength without surprise or leverage.

He shook his head. “He didn’t ask and I didn’t tell. But after he left us Bae insisted we had to turn around to find Lady Belle and tell her what the beggar had said about the dagger being behind the tapestry. He would go no further unless we at least tried. He believed so completely in your boasting about stealing control of the Dark One and banishing the ogres, it was all I could do to at least convince him to stay in hiding instead of coming to help me look for you. And it’s a good thing I did—it would have broken his heart to see his ‘hero’ drinking the night away in the tavern with no thought for the people who’ve died—”

“You have no idea what thoughts were in my head when I was in the tavern,” she said. Perhaps her face gave some of them away though, because he looked away first, almost shame-faced, and shrugged.

“I suppose,” he muttered, though he didn’t sound apologetic.

She released him and eased herself back to sit cross-legged in front of him, their knees touching. “So the—beggar—said the dagger was behind a tapestry in the Duke’s study?”

He nodded. “It was true? It is a dagger? The enchanted item you spoke of?”

“Yes.” She didn’t know what this meant though. Would the Dark One have really told this spinner the location of the one thing that commanded his obedience absolutely?  What was his interest in this man? She examined him closely: skin tanned like leather from days working in the sun, drawn sharply over too prominent bones, a lifetime of hunger and poor living carving deep lines into his face, gray streaking his too-long hair and dusting the stubble on his cheeks. He looked…completely unremarkable. “Did your beggar say anything else?”

He looked uncomfortable, fidgeting a little. “He said something about killing the Dark One…”

Her gaze sharpened. “ _Killing_  him?”

He nodded. “He said if someone kills the Dark One with his own dagger then he—or she—would gain the Dark One’s power for themselves. All of the things that he can do, the one who killed him with his dagger would able to do as well.”

She sat in stunned silence. There hadn’t been anything about  _that_  in her books. She hadn’t thought it was even possible to kill the Dark One: everything indicated that he was immortal, an eternal evil stretching back through history. But—there had been strange things that she’d put down to the tricks of old stories retold until their words twisted and lost their meaning, how once he was called ‘tall and gaunt as a ghoul,’ another time he was called rotund, hideous in his lumbering, lurching mass. A handful of references even made mention of a woman—sometimes pale, sometimes dark.

Was it possible there was not one Dark One but a chain of them, stretching back since some benighted first event, the casting of a terrible curse and the first bearer of the dagger?

“So?”

“So?” she echoed absently, thoughts derailed by the significance of this new information, if it could be trusted. She’d only thought to control him, but would it be better to take his power for her own in truth? Would it be worth it to become the Dark One herself and then not have to fear the tricks of such a powerful servant? Of course, it would come at the price of becoming a slave herself to the power of the dagger…

“So is this useful information? Worth my son putting his life in danger again?” he asked bitterly.

She forced herself to focus on the spinner. “I think so. I…I didn’t know the dagger could be used to kill the Dark One—if what he told you is true. And I didn’t know where in the castle the dagger might be kept.”

But could she trust that information?

 

* * *

 

He offered her a meal of more hard bread and slightly fresher mutton mixed with parsnips. She felt guilty enough eating more of his food—and putting him and his son in danger again—that she tried to give him another gold coin, realizing just one instant too late that it was the worst thing she could have done. It hurt his pride and she saw the sting of it in his eyes before he furrowed his brow and looked away from her.

Because he took it, because he had to, just like she had to take the offer of the food.

It was a bitter thing, bowing his shoulders with shame that he had so little that he couldn’t even afford to offer any of it without taking what was offered in return.

She wanted to apologize but feared she would only make it worse. The very least she could give him was to pretend she didn’t notice.

They sat in uncomfortable silence, staring into the fire until she couldn’t stifle her yawns and began to droop in the chair he’d insisted she reclaim. He was equally insistent she take the only bed and she was too tired and disheartened to argue.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t much of a bed, just a thin mattress stuffed with straw and a few thin blankets over it. It smelled stale, like dust and sweat and…maleness. But it was better than she’d had for the past four days and she fell asleep quickly.

She woke to her heart pounding, her breath shallow and short. There’d been ogres. And a ball where she’d danced with the Duke and the Dark One and then, for some reason, the spinner.

She  _had_  seen the Dark One for the first time at a ball her parents had hosted for the king on one of his visits before the ogres came to her father’s lands, though she hadn’t recognized the significance of the Duke of Frontlands’ strange, hooded servant at the time. It made her shudder now to know she’d been so close to such a creature, but the dream had been worse, dancing in his arms, his hands on her, hers on him, while the music played and they whirled together in the candlelight.

It had been much better to dance with the spinner, who in the dream had needed no cane, and who’d swung her gracefully away from the darkened corner of the ballroom where the Duke and his Dark One had lingered.

She looked across the small room to him, stretched out on a pallet in front of the fire, only his cloak for a blanket. She should at least have offered him hers for the night.

He deserved better than this, she thought sleepily, as she drifted off again, soothed by his soft snoring.

 

* * *

 

She couldn’t say exactly what woke her next: a hushed sound or just a sudden awareness.

When she’d made it clear to her father—at fourteen—that she wouldn’t marry just to give him a ‘proper’ heir and he started allowing her to pursue her less genteel interests, like sword fighting and hunting, she’d begun working on him immediately to allow her to train with his actual soldiers. It took until her nineteenth birthday but he’d finally capitulated and she’d been allowed to go out with a troop of female soldiers who patrolled their then-sleepy borders.

The captain of the group, a foreigner named Mulan, had had definite ideas of what was and was not befitting a female soldier, even the heiress to a duchy. She expected all of the women under her command to be the perfect soldiers: strong, calm, clever, and loyal, slow to anger, quick to defend, gentle and protective with those weaker than themselves.

She’d said she expected more of them because they were women, not less, and she was the one who’d fine-tuned Belle’s skills with her dagger and her sword, who’d trounced her handily in games of strategy and trained her with tales of other strategies tried in blood on distant battlefields, and who’d taught her to hide and feed herself in hostile territory.

If Mulan were on the quest for the dagger Belle had no doubt the other woman would already have it in her possession and have put an end to the ogre threat and the Duke of the Frontlands’ posturing for good.

But Mulan had died a hero’s death, helping to evacuate a small settlement outside Avonlea early on in the ogres war, and Belle was alone to achieve her ends or not.

Sort of alone.

She rolled carefully out of the bed and kept herself low and quiet and she went to the spinner and shook him gently by the shoulder, hand over his mouth to keep him from being too loud when he tried to ask her what she was up to.

“Is there another way out than the front door?” she said as quietly as she could.

He looked at her strangely for a moment but then nodded. She took her hand away from his mouth and gestured for him to lead the way.

He went to the bed and then leaned over it, pressing on a plank that made up one of the walls until it levered out and opened a narrow hole in the wall just barely wide enough for him to squeeze through.

They were lucky no one had bothered to circle the hut. From a distance they heard his meager front door being slammed open so hard he winced and shot a panicked glance over his shoulder and back at where his hovel was no longer visible through the trees and undergrowth but she wouldn’t let him tarry even that much.

They had to make sure his Bae was safe and then, father and son reunited, she would plan her next move.

 

* * *

 

She’d been right in thinking the spinner’s son would be bored near to madness, stuck in a tree with nothing but insects and night creatures for company. When they reached the tree where he’d hidden himself he scampered down at his father’s call with all the speed and agility of a young squirrel and she had to smile at the affection and relief between them as the two embraced, even though her guilt for drawing them into her mad scheme still weighed on her.

“Belle!” the boy exclaimed, struggling out of his father’s arms. “Did you do it? Did Papa tell you? Do you have the Dark One’s dagger?”

She giggled a little. He chattered like a young squirrel too. “Not yet. But thanks to the two of you now I know where it is—and I will get it,” she said more boastfully than she felt.

He startled her, putting his hand on her wrist. “Then we can help you! We can help you save everyone.”

“Uh—”

“Bae, don’t pester the duch—”

“But Papa! We can’t let her go alone; it’s too dangerous!” He spun on his father, still holding Belle by the wrist.

She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry about me, Baelfire,” she said gently, putting her other hand over his. He looked at her and she almost caught her breath at the youthful innocence in his eyes. He wasn’t much shorter than she was and probably wouldn’t be shorter at all for much longer but he was so young. So certain that justice and goodness could carry the day. She smiled. “All I have to do is get into the Duke’s castle and I won’t have any trouble—”

“Wool fat,” Rumpelstiltskin said flatly.

She blinked, tearing her eyes from his son’s dark and trusting gaze to stare at him. He looked irritated—at her failure to live up to his boy’s dreams of a hero or at himself for speaking? “I’m sorry?”

“Lanolin. The wax from sheep’s wool. It’s flammable, like the wooden floors and rafters of the Duke’s castle. If we start a fire—a careful one—everyone will evacuate and while they’re running out  _we_  can sneak in and get your dagger. But I’ll only help with the lanolin and the fire if  _you_  promise to stay hidden.” He pointed a stern finger at his son.

“But Papa!”

“No arguments, Bae. I’ll go with Belle and get the dagger. You will stay where it’s safe.”

“No, that’s perfect,” she said slowly and they both turned to her as if they’d forgotten for a moment she was still standing with them. “The Duke won’t stay in the castle, there’ll be no chance of him recognizing me and with everyone else running out as well I can go straight for the dagger. No one needs to get hurt.”

The spinner sighed but looked more irritated that weary. He shifted his staff and himself around it. “Back into the trees with you two, then.”

“What about you?” she asked.

He sighed again. “I’m going back to get lanolin and wool for starting the fires.”

 

* * *

 

“Belle?” the boy said as they settled into their respective branches of the trees they’d chosen to hide in.

At least neither of them were alone this time, it was bound to be less boring that way—but the spinner was, again, and that bothered her. She wasn’t one for letting others fight her battles for her. “Hmm?” she answered absently.

“Are you really a duchess?”

She glanced at him, a boy to her eyes but still balanced on the threshold of manhood clearly enough. The lust for adventure was as bright in his eyes as it ever had been in hers, reflected in her mirror as she wore the dresses of court and dreamed of leather armor and distant lands. She felt a stirring of pity for his desperately protective father and a sudden pang of longing and sympathy for her own.

She hadn’t always been kind when they’d argued about her being allowed to combat train as a son would have, to adventure instead of attend balls, and be made heir instead of being forced to marry as soon as she of age to provide him with one. Her father had raged, he’d shouted until he was red in the face and she turned away in tears, but in the end he’d acquiesced and in her heart she’d always known he’d loved her and that his hesitance came from fear for her not shame at her choices. She suspected Baelfire’s father would be no happier to hear his boy begging to learn to use a sword and seek his fortune afar than hers had been.

She smiled, a little wanly she was sure. “I don’t really know anymore. Our duchy is overrun with ogres and our people are dead or scattered. My father did secure the king’s agreement that I would be his heir and his land and title pass to me directly—but the lands aren’t much to speak of at the moment and I don’t know how much the title can be worth either.”

“But Avonlea was one of the richest towns in the kingdom! Surely you still have your wealth?”

She snorted, settling back and deciding not to keep worrying about his father, since there wasn’t anything she could do for him now, but keep his son safe. “The ogres have all my wealth. The treasury was mostly intact, except what we could carry to ease our people’s way as they fled, but it’s no good to me, guarded by ogres just like the rest of the castle is. I suppose if they ever move on I might be able to try to get back—but with the Duke of the Frontlands and his Dark One here I doubt I’d be the first in line. Especially since  _they_  don’t have to wait for the ogres to pass, I’d bet.”

“But when you get the dagger and can control the Dark One yourself?”

Youth was ever confident. “I’m still my father’s daughter. With the dagger and the Dark One obedient to me, with my land rid of ogres and my coffers opened again and the survivors of my land free to return—yes. I’ll be a duchess in more than name then.”

He sat back and sighed, clearly dreaming of whatever he thought it was like to be heir to a rich duchy.

For her part, she felt a lead weight settling in her stomach. She hadn’t actually thought much about what would come after. If she succeeded. If she lived.

Her work would just be beginning.

 


	3. Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dagger and the Dark One make their appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very un-beta'ed. I will probably edit it a little more once the work week is over but I wanted to get it posted here. (It's been up on tumblr for a few days.)

The sun was well up by the time her spinner returned and it was quickly agreed between them that the plan would be best conducted under cover of darkness, which left them a longish late-spring day to kill.

They went a ways further into the forest and she found them a cave that seemed secure enough, though it was mostly just a precaution as it seemed the soldiers had either been called off entirely or redirected to the village.

Rumpelstiltskin said his house had been ransacked but he’d shrugged off her concern, reassuring her with resignation but no self-pity that he hadn’t had much to damage or steal anyway and he’d already been ready to leave it all behind to get Bae away from the ogre war. The last part at least was certainly true so she tried to comfort herself with that. If it wasn’t for the Dark One drawing them back into her plans they’d have been long gone and never would have known or cared what happened to their hovel and the rest of their meager belongings.

He was dour and silent as she and Bae chattered through the rest of the day. She suspected she was going to leave the boy more than half in love with Mulan long before she’d run out of stories about her former teacher. If it was the only legacy she could leave her teacher and friend though she supposed there were worse ones.

She started a fire outside the cave and they boiled some of the wool he’d brought, and went about setting the spinner’s plan into action. While he and his boy were at their work she caught them a pair of rabbits for dinner—glad to have the chance at something like real food, fresh and hot, especially knowing this could well be her last meal. She couldn’t let it be his though, she thought, eyeing the spinner from across the fire as she ate.

 

* * *

 

His son fell asleep not long after sundown. It had been a long few days but she was still startled by how quickly he nodded off, slumped down against the wall and floor of the cave in what seemed like a wildly uncomfortable position; one minute he was bright-eyed, caught up in the excitement of one of Belle’s stories and what she and his father were about to attempt, the next, he’d sprawled a bit, eyes shut, breathing deeply, a small smile playing at his lips as the excitement of his current situation followed him into his dreams.

She stepped outside to join the spinner by the fire where he stared in silence at a pile of lanolin soaked wool, twisted up like wicks to kindle the fires they would set.

She sat down across from him, staring at the results of his hard work.

“You…you don’t have to come with me, you know,” she said quietly.

He shot her a sharp glance. “What are you talking about? I already said I’d do it. I’ve been working all day to process the lanolin and prepare the wool.”

“And I appreciate it. But I can take the wool and start the fires. There’s no reason for you to risk your life too.”

He made a disgusted sound. “You can’t go alone.”

It was her turn for a sharp look. What? Because she was a woman? She’d be more useful if things got bad than he’d be. At least  _she_  could run.

She took a deep breath. And that wasn’t kind at all—but what she was about to do was worse.

“I think I have to,” she said softly, steeling herself. “Better alone than with a known coward at my back. I can’t trust you.”

The silence was thick, heavy, cold. A gust of wind shook the trees around them and made the fire crackle. A bit of green wood popped. She strained her ears for any sound that Bae might be stirring in the cave behind them but she wouldn’t look at the spinner.

“I’m sorry,” she went on when he continued to say nothing. “I really do appreciate what you’ve already done, but it’s better I do the rest alone.”

She finally looked at him, but she quickly looked away again, shame like a physical weight on her chest.

His head was bowed, his hair hiding his face, though he was also turned from her and from the fire. Although he was sitting his arms were wrapped around his staff and he clung to it as if he’d crumble without it to cling to.

For any lesser goal than saving his life she could never have done it. To save his son’s father. She was sure she’d done harder things—leaving her parents to face the ogres while she led their people away to safety came readily to mind—but it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

She swallowed and nodded sharply. “Good. Glad that’s settled. At moonrise I’ll take the wool and—”

“No,” he said quietly. Firmly.

She shot an angry look at him. Easier to be angry than to focus on that shame.

He still wasn’t looking at her.

“I appreciate the…spirit of your offer.”—she flinched—“But Bae would never forgive me if I left you to do this alone.” He laughed, a weak, sad excuse for mirth. “I’d never forgive myself. I’m not good for much but no one pays me any mind and I can play look out, at least.”

“I don’t want you to come with me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t blame you, but you can’t stop me.” Still so quiet. So resigned to his value in the world.

With a frustrated sound the stood and stalked off into the forest, telling herself she should patrol to make certain none of the Duke’s soldiers were still about. Or hell, the way her luck was going, to make sure the Dark One himself wasn’t still about stalking her spinner and his son for whatever twisted reasons drove his actions.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take her long to settle. It wasn’t fair to be angry at him for not playing the coward, however much she wished he would just live up to his reputation in this instance.

And she couldn’t shake the sense of something ominous coming; a trick, a trap that was poised to close on her; the bone-deep certainty that tonight would be her last.

Mulan would have no patience for her portents of doom. Soldiers get spooked before battle, she’d have said. Everyone does. Fear can be the edge that keeps you focused and keeps you and your allies alive—as long as you don’t let it rule you. Belle wished again that her friend was there beside her. Or any of the other soldiers she’d trained with. Or her parents. Instead she was alone, facing what felt disturbingly like her final hours with no one for company but her own dark thoughts.

She paused, coming to a small clearing and a bit of clear, uncovered sky, fading to darkness. The stars would be out soon. Something small and far away winged blackly against the deepening night.

She wasn’t really alone. There was a ‘cowardly’ spinner who was determined she not go to the Duke’s castle by herself. She felt her lips twisting as she raked her hands ungently through her hair.

She thought again that he deserved better than what he’d gotten so far, from life and from her. A man who was so quick to give what little he had to anyone who asked it of him was a better man than most she’d met. A man who could raise a son so quick and kind and brave must have a good heart and a quick wit himself. There was worse company to have if these really were somehow her last moments.

 

* * *

 

While she’d been gone he’d moved to sit with his back to the cave, keeping watch out over the forest. He didn’t look at her as she joined him by the fire, not even when she took the seat next to him, close enough their thighs brushed and she could feel the tension in him.

She cleared her throat and stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

A glance at his long hair because his head was tilted down and that was all she could see again. Letting her impulses drive her as she too often did she moved before him and went to her knees, smiling a little as he started. Settling herself on the ground between his legs and setting one hand lightly on his slim, sturdy shoulder, she used the other to brush his hair back from his face and hold it out of the way.

 “What are you—”

“If you will refuse to play the coward you’ve been named by leaving me to this,” she said with a slightly bitter smile. “—you at least have to promise that if things go badly and there’s an opportunity for you to make your escape that you will—for your son’s sake,” she insisted when he was clearly about to argue.

His brow furrowed and he looked away from her. She let his hair fall again and ran her hand up his neck—strange how much she wanted to bury her face against that strong column of muscle and let loose with the extensive litany of her regrets—instead she moved her touch across his stubbled jaw, cupping his lean cheek and turning his head back to her.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she whispered and his eyes met hers again, dark and liquid with something that looked like an echo of the strange feelings flooding her. Pre-battle jitters, surely, but she’d never looked at Mulan or the other female warriors like this. Or any of the soldiers, male or female, who’d stood beside her as the ogres moved ever closer. “Please promise me you’ll leave me and come back to Bae if there’s a choice? Give me that comfort? I never meant to risk either of you when I first saw you in the forest. I’d just wanted to save you.”

He nodded slightly and the movement of his rough skin against her hand made her flesh seem to tingle where they touched. “I know,” he said, so soft and low that she had to strain to hear. “I—I will.”

With a sudden desperation she lunged forward and kissed him, pressing her lips sloppily against his. She hadn’t meant to, hadn’t planned it, and pulled away almost instantly, feeling like a fool for attacking the poor man who’d only wanted to save his son and protect his boy’s friends from the ogres, but she couldn’t make herself actually move away from him, comforted more than she could ever have said that he’d closed his arms around her, if only in surprise.

After a startled, awkward moment, she was further surprised to find him nuzzling more gently against her, rather than putting her away from him, stroking his bladed nose along hers, and then he was kissing her, softly, sweetly, much more expertly than she’d kissed him. His lips were as soft as the rest of his skin was rough, his breath sweet, his overlong hair tickled her face.

They clung to each other, pressed mouth to mouth and chest to chest, until she finally dragged her lips away and rested her head gently in the crook of his neck as she’d wanted to earlier.

He didn’t comment on what she’d just started. “We will get the dagger,” he said instead, with quiet determination and she choked back a hopeless laugh.

“We have to,” he said. “For Bae. We’ll do this. You’ll see.”

She only sighed.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t long until moonrise, and a quiet, somber pair made their way through shadows and trees to the Duke’s castle, both focused on the sleeping boy they’d left behind them.

The spinner would risk anything to see his son safe; the duchess would do anything to see her spinner return alive to his boy, whatever the outcome of her own quest. Even if she failed, she was determined the spinner and his son could still run and escape the Dark One’s influence.

They split up to set the fires, their goal to flush out the inhabitants of the castle without any actual loss of life. The last thing she wanted was more blood on her hands.

Soon she was watching the flames lick along the walls, following the wooden beams of the lowest edge of the roof, holding her breath that the cry she’d hear first would be for the discovery of the fires and not the discovery of her spinner. Her eyes fell shut and a whispered prayer escaped her unbelieving lips until she caught the words:  _Run! The castle’s on fire! Run!_

And she could breathe.

As the spreading flames were noticed and the cry was raised, the servants of the castle flooded out, maids and footmen, cooks and kitchen girls, the Duke’s guard, and finally the Duke himself, all pouring out into the fire-reddened night, while Belle and Rumpelstiltskin found each other in the chaos and moved against the tide, into the burning castle, while all others fled.

 

* * *

 

Her heart was pounding, her breath was more shallow than she’d like. This was not her first battle, not even her first covert mission, but the certainty of doom that had been haunting her since she’d fled from her own castle, leaving her parents and fellow soldiers to their deaths, loomed above her still and she would not let her fate take anyone else again.

His pace up the many stairs to the Duke’s third floor study was excruciating. If she hadn’t been afraid of leaving him to run into any straggling guardsmen alone she’d have dashed ahead just to be done with it, find the dagger where the Dark One had told him it would be, or fall into the trap herself and warn him off with her death if it came to that.

But she was so close. If the Dark One had told the truth the dagger was  _so close_  and all the deaths that had gone before could be—well, at least they wouldn’t have to be followed by countless others. A soldier knew that that was often the greatest good that could be hoped for.

At the top of the stair she finally left him, making for the door.

The fire had beat them there, and the study glowed dully red and orange, casting the flickering light and shadows of irregular flames as it burned from above and raged hungrily across tapestries and books. She felt a flare of panic at the loss of so many precious tomes but she couldn’t let that distract her from the lives that were balanced on her actions now.

On the far side of the room, where the fire hadn’t yet fully claimed its due, a single tapestry remained untouched by the flames, the cool blues and greens of the serene garden it depicted almost aglow in its hellish surrounds. 

She scrambled towards it, tripping over a smoldering, overturned chair in her haste to rip the tapestry away—and face the intricately etched blade and dark handle of the dagger. She’d seen pictures of it as she’d done her research but now with the weapon in front of her she found herself hesitant to touch it. It seemed to pulse with all the darkness and doom that she’d felt chasing her and she knew enough of its history to know too well the evil it commanded.

He wouldn’t come just because his name was called, but he  _would_  come for the dagger.

“Belle!”

The warning and her own instincts saved her. She ducked and rolled away from the sword that was suddenly slicing through the air where she’d stood too long, thinking when she should have been acting. Her sword was in her hand before she thought of it and she kept her back to the dagger and her body between it and her attacker.

It was the guardsman from the woods, the leader, the one who’d made her spinner kiss his boot in an act of cruel fealty.

She’d hoped she’d get him at the end of her sword one day but there could have been a better time for it.

He laughed at her and her sword but she was used to that. Mulan had told her it was a good thing when a larger—usually male—opponent underestimated you. Strength and reach may always work to their advantage but their surprise would always be a welcome companion to her speed.

She flickered around him like the flames she’d set, and managed one good slice to his side but he caught on quickly and turned just in time, deflecting most of her strike along the edge of his armor before he tightened his guard. He wasn’t as stupid as she’d thought him and he’d clearly trained with others who were small and fast as well.

“Who are you?” he demanded, coughing and choking just as she was in the thickening smoke.

She was hampered by her determination not to move from in front of the dagger and he was able to press her back. If she didn’t move away from him, he would overpower her. If he got the dagger then nothing else would matter anyway. She hissed curses under her breath—then a large chunk of a wooden beam crashed down between them and settled the matter.

She tried to scramble away, instinct driving her, but he caught her easily with one outstretched arm and slammed her around against the wall beside him, the dagger in view just over his shoulder but well out of her reach.

Then the world started darkening, between the smoke and the large guardsman’s hand squeezing at her throat she couldn’t breathe and her hands were left to scrabble weakly against his arm, her sword fallen, her hopes extinguished. This was it then, this was how she would die—with the object of her failed quest being the last thing her dimming eyes could see.

Then—the hand at her throat went slack. The guardsman choked, his eyes wide, his mouth working at words that didn’t come. Her frantic gaze sought out the dagger as the guard slumped over her, but the hooks that had held it were empty now. Had the Dark One come? Or the Duke?

She shoved the guard’s corpse aside to find her spinner, one trembling hand covering his mouth, the Dark One’s dagger dripping a sluggish trail of shinning blood that reflected the fires around them.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to the dead man. It must have been a good strike, straight the heart, to take the larger man down so quickly. And it was his first kill, judging by his pallor and racking tremble.

“I’m not.” She grabbed his free hand and started dragging him away.

“My staff!”

“Leave it, you can lean on me.”

He pulled back, both of them half crouching, trying to escape the thick black smoke that was filling the room. “No! I—it’s got Bae’s—I—I need my staff!”

She growled but didn’t argue further, shoving him towards the door and the stairs. “Start down, I’ll get it and catch up.”

“Belle—wait—”

She didn’t stop. “Go!” she shouted, already dashing away. Even in the smoke and falling embers it only took a second to find the staff where it had fallen, rolled up next to the dead guard. It was slightly singed but the sparks extinguished easily enough as she slapped at them.

She caught him less than halfway down the stairway to the second floor but true to her word she kept the staff and let him keep the dagger, pulling his free arm across her shoulder to take his weight and bolster his shaky balance herself.

In moments they were stumbling out into the cool night, away from the fire and the smoke, though they choked and coughed for a long while, even once they were a good distance from the castle and into the shelter of the trees.

 

* * *

 

They collapsed together, still breathless and weak from their efforts, falling against the roots of a large oak while they panted for breath.

“We did it,” she said, smiling through her coughs.

“I killed a man,” he said, subdued.

She sat up and turned to him. “You saved my life.” She touched the forearm of the hand that still gripped the dagger. “And you took the dagger—you’ve saved everyone’s life with this.”

He stared at it for a moment. He raised it up and let the moonlight slant across the still bloody blade. She wondered if he could read the name etched in black under the blood.

He didn’t say it if he could, instead he held it out to her.

She couldn’t make herself reach for it; she chuckled weakly, not quite able to meet his eyes.

“I don’t—ah, I’m a little afraid of that.” She rubbed at her neck.

His head jerked back in surprise.

“It’s just a dagger?” he said.

She glanced, not at him but back at the blade. She’d swear she heard it whispering, a hushed sibilant voice speaking words that no living tongue had spoken in an age. Sometimes she thought she spent too much time with her head buried in her books.

“The magic that’s enslaved to it makes it much much more than ‘just’ a dagger,” she said, choosing not to comment on her persistent fancy.

He looked back at the dagger and after a moment he shrugged. “I—I just see a dagger. What do you mean to do then? We must summon the Dark One, mustn’t we? To stop the ogres and save the child soldiers?”

She nodded slowly and straightened her shoulders. Do the brave thing. It was the only way.

She reached for the dagger, surprised when he pulled it slightly away from her. He met her eyes, looking startled himself. She hesitated, her hand still out, but after only one more instant, glancing at his own hand as though he wasn’t entirely in control of it, he held it out and let her take it.

She didn’t know what she expected when she finally claimed the dagger but after all she’d read it wasn’t that it would feel…like a dagger. The right weight, good balance, the leather hilt warm and a little damp from his grip. By habit she wiped it on the loose leaf litter beside her, then pulled a cloth from her belt and cleaned the blood away. She paused, with the blade still covered by the cleaning cloth, cleared her throat, and stood.

She stepped out from the shade of the tree where a broad swath of moonlight shone almost as bright as day and clearly revealed the name written across the blade.

“Zoso. Zoso, I summon thee,” she said.

She looked around. Nothing stirred. Even Rumpelstiltskin seemed to be holding his breath.

She turned, confused—and then saw  _him_ , standing, hooded, just beyond the tree where her spinner sat.

She gasped. It was closer to him than she’d ever been. Far closer than she’d ever wanted to be.

“You were asking for me?” he said, a hint of mockery in his ancient voice.

She squared her shoulders. “I have the dagger. I control you, Dark One.”

“Yes…yes, you do. Though, you’re not quite the one I was expecting. Still, I suppose congratulations are in order. So what is your command, oh Mistress of the dagger?”

But this was wrong. She didn’t understand. He wasn’t worried or angry, only amused. And her feeling of impending doom hadn’t faded. Why should she feel like she was the one who was about to be enslaved?

“Well? What is your command? Shall I slaughter the Duke and his men? Avenge your family and people? That’s all that’s left to do, isn’t it? Even I can’t actually save them; they’re all already dead. But you know that, of course, you left them to it, what? A week ago now? Why, there might still be some remains there, I can take you to them and we can arrange a proper burial for  _everyone in the world you’ve ever loved_.”

She took a step back, reeling at the thought. The castle not empty, but populated still by—no.  _No!_  Something behind her stopped her and she spun, finding him there, the Dark One, right there, a breath away from her.

“Or command me to kill the Duke’s men right now.” He hissed, leaning over her, his fetid breath stinking of rot and death and making her struggle not to inhale. “The Duke’s surely noticed the dagger is gone by now. He’ll have figured the fires for the ploy they are and gone to check—he can be halfway to capital and the king’s protection in scarcely anytime at all. A smart girl like you knows what that means. Fairy magic will put him beyond even my reach if you don’t act fast. He  _is_  the reason you lost everyone. He told me to send the ogres to your lands, he told me to let them in when he got your letter threatening to tell everyone about the dagger and how he was using the ogres for his own gain.

“Or—I guess that really makes it  _your_  fault, doesn’t it? If you hadn’t sent that letter, stupid, arrogant girl, all your people would still be alive. Your  _parents_  would still be alive—”

“Stop it!” the spinner growled from the shadow of the oak, struggling to his feet with the aid of his staff. “Stop talking to her like that!”

Even breathless and reeling from hearing her every guilt and fear laid out in that horrible sibilant hiss of his, she was aware enough to catch the look of—confusion?—on the Dark One’s face as he caught sight of her spinner, limping towards them.

“ _Now_  you show up,” the Dark One said, almost under his breath and suddenly it all clicked—clearing away the worst of the crippling guilt.

“You wanted  _him_  to get the dagger, didn’t you?”

He sneered and backed away from her sudden confidence, but didn’t answer.

“That’s why you met him in the woods that night, begging for alms—”

Her spinner gasped, only now recognizing the poor beggar in the Dark One’s rich robes and deep, shadowy hood.

“That’s why you caught up with him again as he and his son were fleeing and told him about the dagger. You wanted  _him_  to be the new bearer—why?”

 He grunted and took another step away.

She lifted the blade and ordered, “Tell me!”

“I know how to recognize a desperate soul.” He practically spat the words and after a moment of confusion, she understood.

“You didn’t want him to be the bearer,” she said slowly. “You wanted him to be the Dark One. That’s why you told him where the dagger was and that it could kill you. You wanted him to take the curse. You would have condemned him to that. You would have torn an innocent man from his son so you didn’t have to be a slave to the dagger anymore. How could you?”

She hadn’t even realized she had raised the blade until her spinner caught her wrist. The expression on his face was terrified but he placed himself between her and the Dark One and stayed her hand.

“I—I don’t think you should do that. Uhm…based on what you’re saying.”

She stared from the dagger to his hand on her wrist. He swallowed but didn’t step away. When her shoulders slumped a little he released her and her hand fell limp to her side. She raked her hand through her hair and tried to get her breathing under control.

“You wanted him to have it?” She faced the Dark One. “Alright then. Let’s all see about your choice for the bearer of the dagger. Here.” She turned the blade carefully to offer the hilt to her spinner.

He blinked, his eyes going wide, and took a stumbling step away, clinging with both hands to his staff.

She lowered her voice. “It’s alright. I trust you, Rumpelstiltskin. Just do what you promised Bae you’d do. Command him to send the ogres away and bring the children back.”

With a shaking hand he took the dagger back from her. She put her hand over his on his staff. “Go ahead.”

He held the dagger out and nodded, resolution squaring his shoulders. “Zoso, I command thee,” he said, echoing her earlier words.

The Dark One snorted but she lifted her chin and shot him a warning look.

“Banish the ogres to somewhere where they can’t harm anyone ever again. And bring back all of the children and soldiers from the front—alive and safe.”

Belle squeezed his hand.

The Dark One’s lips were twisted in disgust and, perhaps, fury, but he nodded once and vanished in a plume of angry crimson smoke.

As soon as the Dark One was gone she wrapped her arms around her spinner, burying her face against his throat. His arms wrapped around her, though the hand still holding the dagger he kept awkwardly away from her.

“You did well. I think I was misled by the rumors that you’re a coward. I have to say I haven’t seen a bit of that. Between the guard and the Dark One and putting yourself in front of me when I’m armed—not generally a good idea, by the way.”

He chuckled, a little wetly, though she pretended not to notice that, or the trembling that shook him.

“You should take the dagger back,” he said. “If—if the Dark One was plotting for me to have it, it’s probably better that I not.”

She shook her head but didn’t lift it from his chest. The sound of his heart beating out its steady rhythm soothed her. The night was cool and quiet. Strangely calm after all that happened. He was warm and smelled of wool and dried herbs.

“I think you should keep hold of it. He wanted you to have it for a reason. He knew there was something special about you. You just have to make sure he doesn’t trick you into using it to kill him.”

He made a disbelieving sound that she ignored.

“We can help each other. You and Bae can come with me to rebuild my lands, and I’ll help you deal with the Dark One.” She stroked his chest through the loose, low collar of his shirt. “I’m not a big believer in predestination. I’ve always felt that nothing could decide my fate but me. But even so…it feels right that you have the dagger. When I was petitioning the faeries to try to get them to help with the ogres they told me they wouldn’t interfere in that. That it was part of ‘someone else’s story.’ I think—I think they were talking about you.”

“The fairies? The fairies would never have been talking about me.”

She smiled at the faint note of panic in his tone. “I think they were. The Dark One chose you to be his successor. I think they knew that was going to happen. I think we stopped something tonight. Or changed it.” She inhaled deeply, pressing herself a little closer against him. “And I’m glad.”

They stayed like that for a moment longer before he cleared his throat and gently pulled away, too shy to meet her gaze.

He tucked the dagger into his belt and licked his lips.

“We should go get Bae,” he said.

She smiled and slipped her hand into his, holding it when his fingers fluttered as though he wanted to pull away, but he didn’t. “Yes. Let’s go get Bae.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of Averted is called [If Darkness Never Falls](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3771379/chapters/8380105) and is up [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3771379/chapters/8380105) ([clicky clicky](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3771379/chapters/8380105) if you're interested).


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